Adriana Alfaro Altamirano. The belief in intuition

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Adriana Alfaro Altamirano (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México [ITAM])

The belief in intuition: Individuality and authority in Henri Bergson and Max Scheler

Within the Western tradition, it was the philosophers Henri Bergson and Max Scheler who laid out and explored the nonrational power of "intuition" at work in human beings that plays a key role in orienting their thinking and action within the world. As author Adriana Alfaro Altamirano notes, Bergon's and Scheler's philosophical explorations, which paralleled similar developments by other modernist writers, artists, and political actors of the early twentieth century, can yield fruitful insights into the ideas and passions that animate politics in our own time. The Belief in Intuition shows that intuition (as Bergson and Scheler understood it) leads, first and foremost, to a conception of freedom that is especially suited for dealing with hierarchy, uncertainty, and alterity. Such a conception of freedom is grounded in a sense of individuality that remains true to its "inner multiplicity," thus providing a distinct contrast to and critique of the liberal notion of the self. Focusing on the complex inner lives that drive human action, as Bergson and Scheler did, leads us to appreciate the moral and empirical limits of liberal devices that mean to regulate our actions "from the outside." Such devices, like the law, may not only carry pernicious effects for freedom but, more troublingly, oftentimes "erase their traces," concealing the very ways in which they are detrimental to a richer experience of subjectivity. According to Alfaro Altamirano, Bergson's and Scheler's conception of intuition and personal authority puts contemporary discussions about populism in a different light: It shows that liberalism would only at its own peril deny the anthropological, moral, and political importance of the bearers of charismatic authority. Personal authority thus understood relies on a dense, but elusive, notion of personality, for which personal authority is not only consistent with freedom, but even contributes to it in decisive ways.

(Intellectual History of the Modern Age)

Contents

Introduction Chapter 1. Individuality and Diversity in Bergson and Scheler Chapter 2. Attempts at Free Choice: Bergson and Scheler on Agency and Freedom Chapter 3. Bergson and the Morality of Uncertainty Chapter 4. Varieties of Sympathy: Max Scheler's Critique of Sentimentalism Chapter 5. Personal Authority and Political Theology in Bergson and Scheler Conclusion Notes Index Acknowledgments

Author

Adriana Alfaro Altamirano is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology (ITAM), Mexico City.

https://www.pennpress.org/9780812252934/the-belief-in-intuition/

Transcription: August Baker: Welcome. I am August Baker. Today, the new book we're talking about is The Belief in Intuition: Individuality and Authority in Henri Bergson and Max Scheler, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. I'm pleased and honored to be speaking with the author, Professor Adriana Alfaro of the Mexican Autonomous Institute of Technology. Welcome, professor. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Thank you very much for the invitation. August Baker: I wanted to start with... This is a kind of strange quotation, but it's from a book by Bennett Berger, The Survival of a Counterculture, 1981, University of California Press. He's talking about the ubiquity of the term mind-blowing in the vocabulary of the counterculture. He says, "It was broadened to include a variety of experiences that shook up one's ordinary psychology, and that in blowing one's mind revealed some of the tacit assumptions on which one's ordinary organization of understanding was based." He also noted that it was first used to refer to powerful drug experiences, but eventually it had that [inaudible 00:01:25]. And I was thinking here that this is what you were doing, I felt, kind of mind-blowing in the sense of going back to these authors, Bergson and Scheler, and looking at some different ways of seeing things that maybe have gotten kind of lost in time. But we go back and think, oh, that's a very different way of looking at things. So it's your understanding of the project of intellectual history here? Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah. So I guess from the perspective of the history of political thought, Bergson and Scheler's relative absence in contemporary debates is a symptom, I think, political philosophy having forgotten some important alternatives it did not take, and perhaps could not take after the decisive wars of the 20th century. I'm thinking especially about their emphasis on personal authority, which, as I see it, would present an alternative to Weber's charismatic authority. And of course that was a very difficult subject after the world wars in the 20th century. I'm also thinking about lively and candid, perhaps, approach to metaphysics and morals, untainted by the suspicion, the distrust and the wariness that characterizes many of the philosophical schools of the late 20th century after the wars, just post-structuralism, post-modernism, genealogy, all that kind of thing, which I really appreciate and respect and learned from, but still, the book, I think, is an effort to recover key elements within ways of thought or roots of thought that were available before the wars, and to show how that enriches our present discussions. August Baker: Understood. That agrees with my understanding. You start, and of course the book is called The Belief in Intuition, and I think that comes from a quote that you start with from Hannah Arendt, who said that Bergson was the last philosopher to believe firmly in intuition. So tell us about intuition in philosophy. It doesn't seem like something that a philosopher would be espousing or saying was important. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So the word or the notion of intuition is actually used in philosophy, actually in contemporary philosophy, in political philosophy, which is where I work, where I normally move. But it could be it's useful perhaps to distinguish the way Bergson and Scheler understand intuition from other ways in which the term's understood in philosophy and also in everyday language. In everyday language we say, "I have the intuition," I don't know that... Someone [inaudible 00:04:09] in order to say that I have the hunch or the feeling that that is the case, even if I don't have any evidence about it. August Baker: "I can't explain why, I just sense this." Yes. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Right. Or more philosophically speaking, and this is the way in which John Rawls, the political philosopher uses the word intuition, in order to identify convictions or judgements about the morality of particular actions. So for instance, the conviction that all human beings are morally equal, that's a sort of moral intuition, something that we... A conviction, or perhaps, as I said, a judgment about the morality of a particular action. Or perhaps, as people called ethical intuitionists use the word, as self-evident moral prepositions. Again, it's wrong to kill somebody else, something like that. Kant also uses the word to refer to a representation, something that we cognize and then tie to a concept. So for instance, this microphone that I have in front of me, I cognize the microphone, I have the intuition of the microphone, I connect it to the concept of microphone. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So all those alternatives are not the way in which Bergson and Scheler use the word intuition. So for them, intuition is first of all, a human ability, or perhaps better put, a human power. It is distinct both from reason and sensibility because it's an ability or a power that addresses something that is neither rational nor senseless. So the way it puts it sometimes is that intuition aims at something ineffable and immaterial, something that slips away the philosopher's attempt to see it and grasp it. And what is that that slips away? What is the object of intuition is under sensibility or power? So in the book, what I want to say is that intuition translates in both of them, I mean, there are differences, but first into a certain conception of freedom, a certain conception of individuality and a certain conception of authority that we should be interested in exploring. So that's what intuition means for them. August Baker: Okay. Let's start with individuality. They, as I understand it, offer a defense of sorts of individuality or they like individuality. And I think a lot of listeners are probably thinking, "Oh no, individuality. That's going to talking about rugged individualism and that's hardly what we need." How are they defending individuality and what does that have to do with intuition? Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah, so perhaps I can say something about Bergson first here. Individuality has to do with, in his case, with what he takes as the primary datum of experience, which perhaps some of your listeners are familiar, perhaps others are not, as movement and change. So for Bergson, that's the primary experience that we have. And that means that our experience of our inner reality is like that as well. So movement and change means that our inner self is primarily multiple, and that makes it difficult to grasp and difficult to define or to anchor some definition. August Baker: Right. And when I originally thought about inner multiplicity, I thought, oh, that will mean that we have different drives that are conflicting, but it's really not that at all. Before you get to Scheler, I was very interested in this idea of this cinematographic illusion, basically. But continue on. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Actually, what I was going to say is directly related to that. So as you said, it's not about drives, and in that sense, it's not a Freudian conception of the self or a Jungian conception of the self about the bundle of sensations or whatever. So it has to do with time. It has to do with the centrality of the notion of duration and time, in Bergson, for an adequate comprehension of individuality. So precisely due to the importance of time in Bergson's thought, in order to understand his theory of individuality, it's important to say something about his theory of memory and the role that the brain plays in it. So according to Bergson's theory of memory, the past never disappears. It's constantly there and it's never dead, but on the contrary, prone to constant transformation. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So what he calls a cinematographic illusion is the idea that the past disappears, like the images of a film disappear from the screen, and for Bergson, that is wrong. The past doesn't go away, he says. Instead, he proposes that the past duplicates the present incessantly. And so his view is that the past is preserved in its entirety, and the job of the brain is not to remember, but to forget, to stop perceiving what is past. August Baker: This is what I mean by blowing my mind. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah, I know. August Baker: Keep going. Yes. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Okay, so what does it mean to say that the past does not disappear? So it's truly not the case that he has any hopes of humanity eventually being able to travel in time or something like that. So Bergson's idea is that we stand at the bottom of a corner of this sort of inverted cone; he calls it the cone metaphor. And this cone represents the constant accumulation of the past. At each one of the levels of this cone, we find the totality of the past. So it's not that the base of the cone is like the remote past or whatever. So at each level we find the totality of the past, but at different degrees of contraction or expansion. So he says that, more specifically, the cone displays different levels of consciousness at which we experience different ways of relating to our past: more pragmatic, more direct or more convoluted or complex. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And for Bergson, the only possible access that we have to individuality is by digging tunnels into this cone, so to speak, exploring the multiple ways in which we can traverse its different levels. And that is the other idea that I present in the book. Bergson teaches that the past is those who mix their labor with it, so the more you appropriate your past by digging these tunnels, the more you put yourself in a position to exercise individuality. And that's what I've called Bergson's alternative labor theory of value. August Baker: Right. There was this quotation, he says, "Every moment of our life presents..." I'm getting this from your book. "Every moment of our life presents two aspects, actual and virtual, perception on the one side and memory on another. Every moment of life is split up as and when it is positive, or rather it," I guess, life, "consists in this very splitting." And another point was, if you could talk more about this, I think, this idea of inner diversity as opposed to sort of an outer homogeneity. One of the quotations is, "Our tendency to form a clear picture of this externality of things..." Well, "and the homogeneity of their medium is the same as the impulse which leads us to live in common and to speak." Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah. So there's two ideas in what you said. First, this whole idea of the past duplicating the present. I mean, that is admittedly very obscure and people have made fun of Bergson and this theory that the past has not disappeared, that it's like a dimension that we are not able to perceive but it's there, still. My sense, I don't know to what extent, my sense is that he did believe that literally. But in any case, that's physically correct or not, I guess the effect is of thinking, this alternative way of thinking about time. It sort of undermines the idea of a more plain or flat relation to the past just through mirror images. And here, I don't know if you've seen this series, Black Mirror. Well, it's a Netflix series and there's one episode in which they propose that there's a digital mechanism which is sort of installed in the brain called the grain. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And that allows people to watch on demand selected scenes of their pasts in a film. And their whole life is recorded, with their eyes serving as cameras that shoot everything they see. And whenever they want, they can scroll through the grain, that's how they call it, watching redux either through their own eyes or projecting them in whatever screen is available so that other people can see what they've recorded through their eyes. So from a Bergsonian perspective, the past is not really preserved in this example of Black Mirror. Rather, it is, so to speak, [inaudible 00:13:10] to us for the cinematographic evolution of movement. While we passively sit and watch what the camera, in this case, our eyes, has captured for us. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: But his idea is that actually a proper relation to the past is toilsome and is constant, and it's by laboring with our past constantly and with all the demands that that has every day, not through images that are easily seen, but through a toilsome exercise that involves effort and expectation, activity and passivity, engagement and patience, that allows us to... So his point is that by relating to our past, we can create our future, and that's what individuality and freedom are ultimately about. So I guess, this point, aside from his very strange and [inaudible 00:14:02] fear of the past is that dealing with our past in the proper way, not in the easy way, we can actually build our individuality and create our future. And in that sense, his conception of individuality is individuality as self-creation through a proper relation to our past. So that's what's interesting, I think. August Baker: Right. No, I see what you're saying. And I guess before you go to Scheler, I think one of the things you point out is that it is somewhat deflationary in the sense that it's not just that we have this will that we can exercise. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: That's a deflationary conception of self, that's what you mean? August Baker: Yes. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah. And as if the individual will was something simple. And I guess, Bergson's point is that, and that's why it's not this individualism, easy individualism that perhaps people see in liberal theory or liberalism, or in capitalism and liberalism together. But it's a more complicated and not easily available conception of individuality. August Baker: Right. It's a defense of individuality, but not the typical defense and not one that leads to... Or it's a celebration or a emphasis on the provenance of individuality without it leading to individualism. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: I think that's right. August Baker: And for Scheler, this was fascinating and mind-blowing. I guess, in my notes I tried to summarize it saying, 'emotions perceive values.' And I don't know if that was an oversimplification. That was fascinating to me. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And I think that's correct. So for Scheler, instead of an emphasis on time, I mean, Scheler knew Bergson and was interested in him, but so for him, the possibility of experiencing inner diversity lies primarily in what he calls perception of value, in German, [foreign language 00:16:03]. So his view is that we perceive values just as we perceive this microphone, this glass of water, through our emotions, through our feelings. And in that sense, emotions or feelings are sort of like receptors of something that wouldn't be available for us if we didn't have this dimension of experience, which is our emotional dimension. He's very schematic, he's in that sense, very old-fashioned author, and he proposes a hierarchy of values from the more material to the spiritual dimension. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And the parallel certification of our emotional life according to different types of feelings respond to different spheres of value. So at each level, feelings are, as I said, receptor organs with which we perceive the corresponding values. And the importance of this hierarchy lies, for Scheler, in that individuality becomes possible only through the proper identification of the different ranks of value. So yeah, that's his idea. August Baker: So individuality was one, agency, freedom, just proceeding through your excellent book. If we go to agency in chapter two, I thought let's talk about Kant and maybe you could tell the listeners about the Gallows Man example and awareness of the ought in your alternative awareness. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah, so I don't know to what extent the listeners are going to be familiar with Kant, so perhaps I can clarify first Kant's views, so that we can show how then what I propose in the book based on Bergson offers a different route to morality based on the phenomenon of temptation. So Kant famously held that morality reveals us freedom as a fact. So we know the moral law first and then we know ourselves to be free. That is why morality, according to Kant, is the ratio essendi of freedom. Freedom, in turn, in his view, makes morality possible because it is our capacity to reject our empirically determined interest that is... inclination, drives, in favor of a moral course of action. So he says that freedom is the ratio essendi of morality. And Kant illustrates his theory with an example of a man who is demanded by his prince on pain of immediate execution to give false testimony against an honorable person whom the prince would like to get rid of. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So this man, famously known as the Gallows Man, is, like everybody else, empirically determined by multiple desires and instincts. Yet, Kant says, when a man is presented with the prince's mortal threat, he's capable of overcoming what determines him empirically, because as soon as he becomes aware of his duty, duty to save the man who's about to be killed by the prince, he discovers freedom. And that is Kant's famous awareness of the ought, the famous fact of reason which obliges us and at the same time makes us discover our freedom. And in that sense, freedom is forced upon us, he says. We ought and therefore we can. And thus, as the example shows, freely, we do. So what I do in the book is I propose a different reading of Kant's mini-story, which I approach a bit narratively. It's a vignette, really, in Kant, not a full story, but I approach it like narratively a sort of criminal case with Kant as the main witness, telling us what happened, what the prince commanded, the mental state that the Gallows Man was in. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: We have to determine like a detective or a member of the jury what really happened there with the Gallows Man. So according to my interpretation, in which I use Bergson's phenomenological approach to human action based on intuition, and again trying to read Kant's report as closely as possible, the Gallows Man discovers freedom not through the categorical character of the moral law, as Kant's own interpretation proposes, but through the extent to which he experiences his own capacity for action. So if you agree, I guess we can perhaps review very, very quickly for the audience, the few lines that I focus on in Kant. So very quick, brief quotation. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So Kant says that, "Once the prince has threatened the Gallows Man, we can ask him," so the Gallows Man, "whether if his prince demanded on pain of the same immediate execution that he give false testimony against an honorable man whom the prince would like to destroy under a possible pretext, he would consider it possible to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to assert he would do it or not, but he must admit without hesitation that it would be possible for him. He judges therefore that he can do something because he's aware that he ought to do it and cognizes freedom within him, which, without the moral law would have remained unknown to him." So there seems to be a chronological priority of the Gallows Man unhesitating awareness of his agency. He must first admit without hesitation that it would be possible for him to sacrifice himself, and therefore he judges that he can do it. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So I could, therefore I can. And only later he judges that he can do it because he ought to do it, the famous, "I ought, therefore I can." So I play with the idea there is an awareness of the 'could' prior to the famous awareness of the 'ought,' and that's the whole idea, that it's our awareness that we can do something, or in that sense, the feeling that we're tempted to do something that allows us to discover freedom. Of course, in this case, the Gallows Man is tempted not by a drive or an inclination in the normal sense of the word. The relevant experience of temptation here is to save an innocent person. So the Gallows Man is a martyr because he's tempted by justice, and that is the first categorical experience, so to speak, that we can get in the example. So it's a reinterpretation of Kant's own example that I propose, following Bergson's theory of morality to say that temptation is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom because it enjoys, chronologically speaking, prior status. August Baker: You refer to a phenomenology of temptation, a phenomenology of hesitation. There's that moment when the agent realizes that, okay, the prince is commanding me to do this and I could not. It's that momentary pause there? Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah, the realization that we could actually disobey the prince and save the man, not out of a sense of duty, but out a sense of possibility. I can save that man and therefore I do it. And I mean, normally, when we think about temptation, for instance, when we think about addiction, we think of that as very oppressive and something that traps you in a way. And my point in this chapter is to show that of course, I mean that's of course true of temptation, and in the sense of addiction, and that kind of things, of course can trap a person and make that person unfree in very horrible ways. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: But what I want to propose is that temptation is multiple. On the one hand, yes, it can trap us, when, for instance, you're addicted to something. But on the other hand, it can make you feel your agency, the fact that you're not determined by your drives, that there's some sort of hesitation, that there's some sort of margin. And in that moment of hesitation, that moment of temptation in that sense, you can feel your agency, even if, of course, if temptation, you fall and you miss that moment of hesitation and you become addicted in a more oppressive way, then of course that's lost. But that's the idea. August Baker: That's very helpful, thank you. I want to move to chapter three. There's so much in chapter three. The morality of uncertainty. Could you tell us about maybe Bergson and virtual instinct, fabulation, another mind-blowing... Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah. So perhaps tell you first, so the main ideas of the chapter, the main idea, and then I can go on ahead to- August Baker: [inaudible 00:24:51] Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah, exactly. And then I can talk a little bit about virtual instinct. So the idea is that for Bergson, and here I'm still talking about Bergson, uncertainty provides a kind of opportunity for agency. So it's a condition of possibility for agency. And this means two things. First, the idea that reality, what surrounds us, sort of mirrors the human agent, and so uncertainty is a characteristic of reality, provides an opportunity to model our agency in a more dynamic, less determined way. So reality as something uncertain gives some flexibility to our agency. Another way of putting this is uncertainty would offend a completely defined and established personality for which only the categorical would be apt. On the contrary, contingency's not necessarily an embarrassing match for what remains supple and finished anyway. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So that's the first idea. Second idea is that different ways of understanding uncertainty allow us to model our agency differently. So a moderate approach to uncertainty allows us to forge an identity capable of relying both on habit and improvisation and in that sense remain flexible. Those are the main ideas of the chapter. And then the part on virtual instinct. So what Bergson says is that an animal, a non-human animal, has only instinct and therefore, that in a way there is no uncertainty for this animal. But when we have intelligent animals, intelligent in the sense of having language and therefore not relying on instinct only, then in a way that because we are intelligent, uncertainty appears, uncertainty as the gap between our expectations and our plans and reality. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And a Bergson's idea is that for these kind of animals, intelligent animals in the sense of having language, so human animals, we don't have instinct in that sense, in the sense of animals, but we have virtual instinct. And such an instinct, he says, will allow us to cope or deal with the discouragement in action that falls from the limits of rational insight into the future. So virtual instinct is sort of like what we have instead of the proper animal instinct that allows us to cope with that disappointment. Here, Bergson deals with all this literature of anthropology dealing with "primitive" people, which was very strong at the time. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And he says, well, these "primitive people" are not that different from modern civilized people because we all have this virtual instinct, although in different ways. For "primitive people," this myth-making faculty, this idea, think about taboos, these myths and fabulations that allow them to make sense of the world. And from the point of view of civilized men, using the language of the 20th century, that sense, ridiculous or preposterous. But actually we are very much like them, that's what Bergson says. And our conception of chance, he offers very interesting analysis of our conception of chance and how it's actually very similar. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: It performs a very similar function as the taboos, for instance, in primitive people. And the idea is that chance, even if we like to think that it's very scientific and statistics and all that kind of thing, is actually a sort of half-personal idea that allows us to relate to uncertainty in a more personal way. So when we say, "Oh, you were very lucky. Luck was with you," we sort of personify the idea of chance or fortune. Well, actually Fortuna is the more clearly personal conception of chance in that sense. And he says, if you see how modern civilized people use the word chance, you see that it's like a partner, it's like a peer, something that comes with you and that allows you to relate to uncertainty in a more personal human way. August Baker: It's this mystic cause for the "civilized." Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah. Yeah. August Baker: And I will leave this to the listeners to read the book, but there was this really nice turn of phrase. First of all, you introduce the French philosopher and poet, Jean-Marie Guyau, and I'll just leave chapter three with this quote of yours: "While chance gives rise to expectations and predictions, risk, the wild twin brother of chance always elicits our love or our aversion." That was a very nice turn of phrase. Guyau will be talking about risk instead of chance. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah, Guyau is a very obscure personality and figure, but I use him to contrast his idea of risk with Bergson's idea of chance, and to show how if our approach to uncertainty is not moderate, if risk, contingency and insecurity are given a preeminent focus in personal and political thought, when they're turned into the main problems to be addressed, we are usually left with two options: either total insurance against risk at the cost of liberty, so think of Hobbes' Leviathan, or the absurdity of experiencing risk for the mere joy of it. And what I propose, that Bergson's conception of chance offers us a more moderate way to approach uncertainty. August Baker: Right. Oh, boy. Let's see, I'd really like to spend time on chapter four, which is Scheler's conception of sympathy versus Smith's, but I think we have so little time. Let's move on to chapter five on authority. How can a person who has this inner diversity be bound by authority? Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: So the last chapter is a reflection, well, it's an effort to answer that question. What kind of authority is best suited to address the individual, in Bergson and Scheler's sense, the individual that is understand as multiple, not the liberal individual understood as having only a will? And my answer is that the kind of authority that is best suited to address this individual is not that of the law, but that of another person. And by this I do not want to say that the law cannot properly address us, but that we would be losing something very important if we neglected personal authority. So this yields a conception of personal authority that, compared to Bavarian rational authority, or perhaps more recently for political philosophers or legal philosophers, [inaudible 00:32:08] epistemic authority, is allegedly better at speaking to us meaningfully, more persuasively, more compellingly as an authority. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And that corresponds to their personalist outlook. I mean, it's a conception of authority known as [inaudible 00:32:26]. And of course, I mean, today I don't think I need to say much about the dangers associated with personalist politics. Today we hear a lot about charismatic authority and how democracies die, populism, the dangers associated with strong men, and all the lessons we should remember to avoid tyranny. So all that's real. But my interest in [inaudible 00:32:52] and specifically in the figure of [inaudible 00:32:55], that they both explore and analyze and use as a pedagogical resource that can teach us how to emulate admirable, exemplary people who exert an extraordinary pull on others, is that in the midst of all the fears associated with charismatic and personal authority, we might very well lose sight of the fact that democracy also depends in crucial ways on these type of figures. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And actually, many people have indicated this within the traditional political thought, a lot of people have talked about the importance of moral pioneers in one of the drivers of changing the ethos of society. For instance, very recently, Naomi Klein in her book On Fire, acknowledges the superpower of Greta Thunberg in order to spark the Green movement and [inaudible 00:33:49] climate change and all that kind of thing. And of course, the classic example is Rousseau's figure of the legislator, without which the foundation of a truly just political community would be impossible. And what I look for in Scheler and Bergson's respective conceptions of [inaudible 00:34:05] is to show that liberalism would only at its own peril deny the anthropological, moral and political importance of those figures, who in the famous words of Rousseau, can compel without violence and persuade without convincing. So that's the interest. August Baker: Right. And you talk about an ethics of imitation as Scheler's defense of an elusive aristocracy. Could you spend a moment of all these on Bergson's modern defense of ostracism? That was very interesting. And on the value of humility, I guess. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah. So perhaps I could say something about this ethics of imitation or emulation that I identify both in Bergson and Scheler, and which I think, going back to your point about individualism are especially apt correctives to that kind of problem. So think of, perhaps our audience has heard this term of ethics of authenticity that Charles Taylor articulated in the nineties. And his idea was that of course, modern individualism and the narcissism and competitiveness and egoism that goes with that is very troubling and we have to think about that. But Taylor's idea was that there is an ethics, an important moral ideal behind that individualism that needs to be recovered in order to understand the force of individualism. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: And his point was there's a good version of it that needs to be recovered so that we can actually be properly guided by it. And that was his ethics of authenticity, the idea that each one of us is trying to become what oneself truly is, and to find or build, perhaps, I don't know what the right word is, our own authentic, unique personal self. And interestingly, what I find in Bergson and Scheler is a sort of ethics of emulation that tries to find a way of moral growth and a way to individuality, tries to find individuality by way of imitating another. August Baker: Which is what we do, indeed. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yes. I mean, on the one hand, today with social media and all that, a lot of followers what you want to have, but that's what you are as well. So you might better find the right way of following and the right way of imitating others. And their point is that by way of emulating, rightly emulating other people, which of course doesn't mean copying their way exactly or literally, but entails an exercise of an analogy, like what would whatever, whoever do in my situation? Of course, you're not Jesus, you're not Napoleon, you're not Greta Thunberg, but what would that person do in my case? And that exercise they propose combines, on the one hand, an acceptance of humility an acceptance of personal authority and the existence of exemplary people. On the other hand, it's an exercise of applying that example to your situation, and in that sense, getting to know yourself and your own particular situation, but in a more humble way. August Baker: And in that way you can really feel, as opposed to a rational law. Right? Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: Yeah. In a way that you can identify with personally, instead of following a rule of thumb or general rule. Which again, doesn't mean that there is no place for general rules or laws or whatever. That's not my point. The point is that there is some dimension of experience that can only be addressed by other people or the example of other people. So yeah, I think that's interesting, especially in the context of where individualism still is a concern, just as in the nineties with Taylor. And I think it's an interesting alternative. I mean, I really like Taylor and his idea that we need to actually bring forward the best version of that individualism, but perhaps this is actually, it's an interesting alternative way, the ethics of emulation, that we could try in order to address that individualism. August Baker: That's fascinating. The book is The Belief in Intuition: Individuality and Authority in Henri Bergson and Max Scheler. Thank you so much for speaking with me, Professor Alfaro. It's been a pleasure. Adriana Alfaro Altamirano: No, thank you for the invitation. It's been a pleasure for me.